#118 A Corporate Republic (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

For the last few days, I've been considering the results of this last election.  I've wondered why the results, from the beginning of the Presidential campaign two years ago to Tuesday, needed to be as destructive as they were.  I've wondered why Florida, New Mexico, and Ohio's elections so desperately needed to be thrown to George Bush, regardless of the choices made by individual voters.  I've worried that my country no longer counts individual votes for some secret, evil reason and I've tried to understand that reason. 

I think I do understand.  It's all been there for me to see for my entire life.  As President Rutherford Hayes said a few decades back, the United States is a republic "of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation."  We all know this, even if we still hope that it isn't true.  In the US, Corporations have more power, rights, and freedom than individual humans.  Corporate execs can even contract or mass-produce murder with little fear of prosecution.  The politically correct term is "the defense industry," but after Iraq and G.W. Bush nobody outside of this country will ever call it that again.  The United States is clearly an aggressor and we have stepped past "offense" well into offensive.  Corporations making medical products do it all the time.  The military-industrial complex bases its output on murder.  Companies that abuse the nation's natural resources and spew toxic pollution into the air and water have happily murdered children and adults for decades.  Our current system of government has been specially designed to allow corporations to prosper from the death, dismemberment, and illness of individual citizens. 

We are a corporate republic, not a representative democracy.  Individuals no longer matter to the government we have allowed to exist.  Even worse, we are now trying to export this awful form of government to the rest of the world.  Our experiment in "nation building" in Iraq is just an extension of the nation building we've attempted all over the world.  All of the "freedom" drivel aside, the purpose of the Iraq invasion was to assume power over their oil assets.  It's no more sophisticated than that.  South America has suffered, for nearly 100 years, from our attempts to build corporate-oriented nations. We've tossed off South American elected governments when they tried to restrict the "rights" of US agribusiness and dope peddlers. 

In the last two decades, Europe and, especially, Asia have succumbed to the US corporate-oriented form of government.  In many of those countries, individual humans have become nothing more than slaves to their corporate manufacturing masters.  Those same countries are where the United States has shown that it values economic relationships far above human rights. 

The Corporation, a film that studied corporate behavior as if it were an individual human, found those organizations to be functionally sociopathic.  As its reference, the film used the DSM-IV-TR, the manual psychiatry designed for use in the diagnosis of mental disorders.  The characteristics of anti-social personality disorder (aka: sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors) are determined from consistent behavior described in the following:

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

Anyone who spent a moment of time in the belly of a corporation, especially a Fortune 500 corporation knows that most of this list constitutes "performance standards" within those organizations.  Personally, I witnessed those exact behaviors within two medical devices corporations, repeatedly, from corporate execs and the actions of the corporation.  In fact, any corporation that does not act psychopathically is violating US law by not protecting the interests of its investors above all other considerations.  Corporate ethics are very different from human ethics.

Robert Pirsig, in his book Lila, wrote about society being the higher animal: the entity that is the next, massive, step up the food chain from individual humans.  One piece of critical information that he missed is that the individual members of US society are corporations, not humans.  Individual humans are nothing more than cogs in the wheels of corporations.  The society we serve is populated by corporations, not humans.  Humans are two steps removed from being at the top of the world's food chain.  If individual humans decide to act in their own interests, which will usually be opposed to the interests of corporations, the corporations simply force their governments to ignore that human intervention.  That is what happened in this election.

Currently (and for the last 100 years), Republicans are the purest corporate political party, but they are followed closely by the Democrats.  Both parties are sponsored and directed by their corporate masters and neither offer a hopeful choice to individual citizens.  Without the sponsorship of corporations and their executives, neither party would attract much attention or loyalty from individual citizens.  The only intelligent citizens who do pay serious attention to the major parties are CEOs and wanna-be-CEOs.

CEOs are not necessarily evil folks, although they are certainly not the kind of people that you'd invite to your home for dinner with your family.  However, acting to serve the needs of the institutions of which they are barely a vital organ, they regularly do evil deeds.  The gigantic salaries they receive induce them to do whatever evil tasks their corporate group-mind needs done, even when those acts are obviously harmful to the world, the nation, and their communities.  With the assets of the corporation, CEOs have caused an amazing amount of damage to our democracy and the nation.

The politicians who write laws to benefit corporations, at the expense of the lives of the individuals and communities they pretend to represent, are probably not evil.  But, the organizations that put them in their offices are absolutely evil by design.  So, the laws the politicians write and promote have harmful intent and effect.  In this case, the ends and the means are identical. 

The corporation has not been a successful organization, from an evolutionary standpoint.  Corporations have served to promote overpopulation, world-climate-altering pollution, vanishing natural resources, and heartless social injustice.  The corporate social model is self-destructive and it may destroy the species that serves it.  It has already destroyed our representative democracy.  If the US continues to export this form of government to the world, most of us may live to reap the "rewards."  A psychopath, in any form, is a dangerous, irrational being.  Allowing psychopathic institutions to direct the nation's political system is suicidal. 

Being Engineered

If there is a phrase that Americans despise more than “social engineering,” I’m not sure I want to know about it. There is a reason, although not a good reason, for so many of us having negative feelings about social engineering: we are no longer the engineers. The things that change society are no long mostly generated by our economy. There are lots of reasons why the United States went from a driver of new ideas and technologies to an unwilling, uneducated, hostile passenger. One big reason has been the country’s unwillingness to make the obvious and, now, insanely expensive, conversion to the metric system. Another is the fact that we have always suffered from an intellectual inferiority complex. All the way back to Alex Tocqueville, in his 1835 book Democracy in America, wrote “I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.” For the most part, that has been true. Our Presidents, congress critters, governors, mayors, and other elected public servants  have been, on average, sub-average men and women. When superior men do run and are elected, they are easily ridiculed for (and often defeated by) being “elites” and “eggheads. Adlai Stephenson and Barak Obama are modern examples.

Social Engineering is a given. We’re doing it, even when we are doing nothing. The range of social engineers runs from incredibly incompetent to scary good, just like real engineering. The social engineering done by the Nixon/Ford/Reagan/Bush I & II crowd was akin to a really incompetent shade tree mechanic. They systematically, but fairly ignorantly, dismantled the middle class, ripped the competence right out of the State Department, the CIA, the EPA, FCC, FDA, FDIC, SEC, and every core competency of the United States government from Washington D.C. to every state capital. Their “plan,” if you can give it that much credit, was to clear a path for their 1%’er owners to gut the nation’s wealth, wreak democracy, and restore a feudal system. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong concept. Still, it was social engineering by a bunch of idiots who wouldn’t know a slide rule from a yardstick.

Clinton’s presidential and political hero was Eisenhower, so there wasn’t much point in expecting great engineering skills from the people Clinton staffed his cabinet. Accidentally, he managed to find a few areas of competence and that’s about all it took to turn around 12 years of borrow-and-spend Republican wastefulness and hand Bush II an almost balanced budget and a diminishing national debt. The Bush II crowd couldn’t build a sandbox without assistance, and it took them no time to reverse-engineer the Reagan economic catastrophe and even go Star Wars and Grenada a good deal worse.

Engineering is manipulating the current status or technology. You can either have it done by professions who are skilled with mathematics, science, and some talent for making things happen or you can let the shade-tree idiots play with tools they don’t understand until the tree falls on them and us.  There are no other alternatives.

#117 Why A Business Exists (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The MBA folks will tell you that a business exists to make money; period.  Businesses that operate that way don't succeed for long.  Businesses that start out with that simple-minded motivation rarely survive the first year of operation.  So much for what MBAs know about business.

Businesses that succeed serve their customers, first, and profit from that service, second.  Businesses that succeed really well know their customers really well and know exactly how to meet their expectations.  The only way to do that is to set out with the intention of serving a group of customers with a product or service that will meet the needs or desires of those customers.  The word that keeps appearing here is "service." 

Most execs have absolutely no idea how to provide service.  They believe the world was set up to provide services to them, not the other way around.  However, many successful business ventures were started by people who were driven to provide a service and wouldn't let anything, including financial or personal hardship, get between them and the people they intended to serve. 

Bill Gates and his partner dropped out of college and set up shop in a New Mexico Holiday Inn so that they could be close to their first customer, Altair (a long dead, early computer company that provided as little service as possible to its customers).  Their product was a simple version of Basic (a product that Microsquash is still promoting and supporting) that had been specially ported for the Altair's processor and I/O.  It's tough to provide much more service than moving into your customer's backyard and developing the product exactly to their application.

A company I worked for, a decade ago, once filled it's assembly lines with musicians and music lovers because the founder/chief engineer and the rest of the execs had absolutely no idea how to design the professional music products they intended to build.  They were bright enough to hire people who might use the products and would criticize the products until they were right.  Now, that same company has staffed its sales and marketing departments with ex-professional sound engineers who provide the same capability. 

Since then I've been employed by, or temporarily contracted to, a variety of companies, in a variety of industries, that have not managed to develop any sort of corporate service attitude.  I wish I could say the experience has been enlightening, at least, but it's mostly been depressing. 

The fault always lies in the same location; at the top.  CEOs who believe they've paid their dues and deserve royal treatment start the attitude disadvantage.  CFOs, CMOs, UFOs, Vice-Presidents of Nothing Useful, Directors of Nobody, Managers of Managers, and all of the pointless, overblown titles that amount to folks serving no one but themselves and performing no work that benefits the organization follow down the chain of power.  By the time the company's pecking order reaches down to the people who actually perform the function of the business, the business focus is totally blurred. 

Generating a business statement is a pointless exercise in a business where the people who stand to profit the most are completely disassociated from the business activities.  And that's the way smart companies think; the people who gain the most from the business success should work the hardest and smartest.  If the folks at the bottom of the totem pole believe the people at the top are supporting the company's reason to exist, everyone is going in the same direction and the whole can exceed the sum of the parts.  When that happens, it's fun to go to work in the morning.  When it doesn't, the lion's share of paperwork generated on the company printer is resumes.

#116 Who Are We to Export Democracy? (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The Bushies are still jabbering about "nation building" and "holy wars."  Bush preaches that "we will expect a higher standard of reform and democracy from our friends in the region (Iraq)," while doing everything to repress democracy and reform in the US.  More of that "do what I say, not what I do" parenting. Business that can't build quality products find that they can't design them, either.  Governments that aren't democratic will be as disabled when it comes to building democracies. 

Bush was the first unpopularly un-elected President since 1888.  Even worse, Bush is the first appointed President in the history of the nation.  Not only did he lose the popular vote, he lost the fair count of the state and, therefore, the electoral vote.  He used his daddy's Supreme Court to overrule state and federal Constitution law.  The Republican brown shirts revel in this triumph of power over public choice, but the rest of the world wonders "what is next?" for the most powerful country in the world. 

The makings of a democratic undoing have been with us since the beginning.  This isn't the first time the country's future as a semi-representational democracy has been in doubt.  This may be the worst time for it to happen, though.  The Electoral College is a decrepit concept that was intended to compensate for pre-electronic communications difficulties and the founding ruling class's distrust of the "unruly masses."  Alex Hamilton was one of the big supporters of the Electoral college and he's possibly the least democratic of all of the folks who had anything to do with the authorship of the Constitution.  Aaron Burr did the nation a great favor by shooting Hamilton.  Burr should have kept going and shot the Electoral College. 

Since 1789, barely 20,000 people have elected all of the Presidents in our nation's history.  In 2000, a half-million more citizens voted for Gore than Bush, but 271 electors voted for Bush and that's all she wrote for democracy.  The rest of us were just exercising our right to put marks on pieces of paper and to waste a few hours on a November Tuesday.  This country is as far from a one-man-one-vote nation as was the old Soviet Union.  In fact, in the least populous states (like Montana), one man exercises approximately 670,000 votes. 

Let's look at this institution that elects our President and Vice President.  When we're through, if you still believe your vote counts, I'd like to hear your opinions on the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, informative news outlets, and honest politicians.

First, the electors are selected by the two major parties long before the election takes place.  This is to ensure that no third party ever has a chance in hell of winning an election.  48 states have a winner-take-all elector selection system, regardless of how split the state's vote actually was the winner takes all of the electoral votes for the state.  This further entrenches the two-party system and, effectively, tosses out the minority voters before their vote leaves the state.  One-man-one-vote?  Hardly.  Only Maine and Nebraska have a proportional system that divides up the state's electoral votes in relation to the actual citizens' vote.  The majority of states don't even care who you vote for, as long as you vote Demolican.  If you vote for a member of one of the major parties, it's assumed that you voted for the candidate that party has selected.  Names don't matter.

In half of the states, the electors are legally committed to vote for the party's candidate, in the rest of the states the electors can vote for anyone they see fit.  Electors rarely exercise judgment or ethics, but they do have the right to do so if an actual human ever managed to be in that position.  Our system has been so perfect at eliminating humans from the Electoral College that only 12 people in the history of the institution have bucked the Powers That Be.  It's a nearly perfect, immoral, mindlessly undemocratic system. 

The actual voting for President and Vice President takes place on January 6, most years.  The votes are counted by the US Senate in a special, damn-near secret meeting in the chamber of the House of Representatives.  If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the 12th Amendment allows the House to pick the president.  Of course, they can pick anyone they see fit, regardless of how you and I voted.  I wouldn't put it past the birdbrains we've had in the House in the last few years to select their favorite Hollywood actor or the King of England, if there weren't minimal limitations on their options.  However, they can only pick from the top three candidates in the general election.

In the 2004 election, 538 electors will decide the Presidency (based on the states' 100 Senators + 435 Representatives + 3 electors from the District of Columbia).  A candidate just needs 270 votes to win.  Some fools think that the college was founded to protect small states.  The fact is only 11 states are necessary to elected a President.  For example, if California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina vote together, the rest of the country can go to hell.  If that's a representative democracy, I am a Republican. 

It's true that the citizens of smaller states wield greater influence on their state's electoral votes, but the states themselves are less important.  States are not the big issue in a democracy, though.  States are just border lines between sales tax rates.  The real issue in a democracy is citizens' ability to govern themselves.  The Electoral College is another example of how corporations have installed themselves in the real power seat of the country.  They select the candidates, they control the electors, and they decide who will be mismanaging the country for the foreseeable future.  The rest of us are just expendable employees. 

The "battleground states" are the states with big Electoral College membership.  The first seven, California through Ohio, are the most populous states and they possess 256 of the necessary 270 votes necessary to win the election.  This system makes it possible for corrupt politicians to cater their platform to these states, damning the rest of the country to political purgatory.  If you still have any questions about why California receives so much federal personal and corporate welfare, the Electoral College is as far as you need to look.  Want to do your own math, as the Demolicans have already done?  To see how few states are involved in electing a President, here are the numbers for your experimentation pleasure:

The 2004 Electoral Vote

California - 55
Texas - 34
New York - 31
Florida - 27
Illinois - 21
Pennsylvania - 21
Ohio - 20
Michigan - 17
Georgia - 15
New Jersey - 15
North Carolina - 15
Virginia - 13
Massachusetts - 12
Indiana - 11
Missouri - 11
Tennessee - 11
Washington - 11
Arizona - 10
Maryland - 10
Minnesota - 10
Wisconsin - 10
Alabama - 9
Colorado - 9
Louisiana - 9
Kentucky - 8
South Carolina - 8
Connecticut - 7
Iowa - 7
Oklahoma - 7
Oregon - 7
Arkansas - 6
Kansas - 6
Mississippi - 6
Nebraska - 5
Nevada - 5
New Mexico - 5
Utah - 5
West Virginia - 5
Hawaii - 4
Idaho - 4
Maine - 4
New Hampshire - 4
Rhode Island - 4
Alaska - 3
Delaware - 3
D.C. - 3
Montana - 3
North Dakota - 3
South Dakota - 3
Vermont - 3
Wyoming - 3

Defining Leadership

"There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader." Mahatma Gandhi or "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" Benjamin Disraeli

In the last six years, President Obama has been beat up quite a lot for his “lack of leadership.” Most of the beating comes from the Fox News crowd, so it is unclear what their definition of “leadership” might be. Having been a middle manager a few too many times, upper management a couple of times, and being stuck in meetings with people who made far more money than any human could possibly be worth way too many times, I’m not much of a believer in what most pundits and other non-working-and-never-had-a-real-job experts call “leadership.” Stupid people will follow any loud voice off of the nearest cliff, but society, science, or accomplishment is never achieved by stupid people. Practically any piece of human excrement can filter to the top of a military organizational chart and for the less-than-average intelligence sorts a fancy jacket and hat and lots of merit badges qualifies as evidence of leadership. Being anointed with a leadership position does not prove that one is, in fact, a leader. The bankster CEO history has pretty much proved that repeatedly in the last 200 years. Even Forbes Magazine, a leadership worshiping machine if there ever was one, has a list of incompetent CEOs.

I think the modern American myth and value of leadership is mostly about avoiding responsibility, as a society, or intentionally as in convincing the 99% that there is nothing they can do about the rape and pillaging of their country and assets. The fact is that in every moment in history when a “great leader” arose, there were a lot of great (or greater) “followers” involved. You can not lead sheep into battle, but wolves are a whole ‘nother issue. In our country’s past, we’ve been blessed with a few defining moments when the general population was fed up with the status quo and looking for a representative to “lead” the country in a new direction. The two Roosevelt’s were great examples of those times and the population being led. Teddy took over the country in 1901, after the country had suffered for years from the 1893 Great Depression and the following mediocre recovery. Populist and socialist sentiment was high and the ruling class were under constant revolutionary threat, so Roosevelt had the popular support and activist backing to move the country forward several great steps. Franklin Roosevelt took office after several years of Republican mismangement caused the second Great Depression and banksters had destroyed the world economy leading to the rise of Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany’s fascist political parties. The United States had its equivalent fascist movement, but the populist and socialist movements were stronger (lucky for us) and Roosevelt rode that strong wave to the Presidency (Three times, inspiring Repuglicans to write the 22nd amendment so they’d never be out of power again.) and outside of the really stupid states crushed the Republican party for almost two decades.

"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." Theodore Roosevelt

"It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership." Nelson Mandela

Traditional leaders knew they were no rare commodity and until modern warfare changed leadership to bureaucracy, leaders led the charge into hazards. There was a reason their soldiers “followed” them. It’s hard to take any modern political leader seriously, since their motto for four generations has been “I’d love to go with you, but they need me here.”

"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." Colin Powell

Most CEOs think the company and it’s employees are there to serve their whims. They have aids, subordinates, VPs, CFOs, COOs, and a collection of sycophants who don’t contradict the Fearless Leader or offer the slightest contradiction to his most insane “insights” or product or promotional insanities. Not only are they afraid to open their mouths, they’ve been selected to say “yes” and nod approvingly. That’s pretty much it for their business skills. That sort of mismanagement can’t really solve problems, but they can sure create some.

"A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together." Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Creating and maintaining teams is the hardest of all leadership tasks. Most of the people who want to hold the big corner offices wouldn’t recognize a team if one trampled them to death. In my experience, most teams are “built” by accident, not by management’s design. When a group of people with disparate but complimentary skills happen to form, the real leadership skill is finding ways to hold that unlikely combination together. Most management people are jealous of competence in any form, but terrified of group competence since it pretty much eliminates the illusion of leadership necessity. Regardless of the profitability, invention, or strength the team provides the organization, most managers will do almost anything to tear the team apart and return the organization to the dysfunction that appears to require a leader. I’ve lucked into participating in three excellent, productive teams in my career and all three were unintentionally and incompetently or intentionally and jealously destroyed by upper management. Each of those teams were responsible for the products that sustained the companies for several years after the teams dissolved and none of those businesses ever again managed to assemble similar groups or equally successful products.

"All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership." John Kenneth Galbraith

In President Obama’s case, Galbraith’s requirement would demand that the country have a couple dozen Presidents because our nation is full of major anxieties. We may be the most fearful, most conservative nation in human history. Likewise, most incompetently managed businesses are overwhelmed with anxiety. Applying Pareto analysis to focus the organization’s attention on the most important anxiety might help, but the organization would have to be functional and sentient enough to comprehend the analysis. 21st Century United States is as terrified of mathematics and logic as it is of its “black” President. The intellectual requirement for citizenship is beyond the capacity of far too many of our citizens. The intellectual requirement for being led is equally unobtainable. Too many Americans do not want a President, they want a king or a dictator. Neither of those are leaders.

"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." Max Lucado

President Obama has done a fair job of that. All of his administration’s accomplishments have been achieved without the assistance of Congress, the Extreme Court, much of the military, federal and state law enforcement, or popular support. In the eyes of the world, President Obama was a game-changer. In the eyes of his fellow Americans, he is either a hero, a sell-out, or the anti-Christ. However, some of the crowd is treasonous and vicious. That group should be brought down with the full force of the law. Obama does not have the support of too much of the military, law enforcement, or even the federal government. Those groups are completely committed to pursuing the interests of the nation’s ruling class and the last thing they are likely to support would be a democratically elected President. As traitors and carpetbaggers, these groups are completely committed to demolishing what Washington called “our great experiment” in democracy and self-rule.

"Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal." Vince Lombardi

“Work” is a four letter word and a concept with which our ruling class has no familiarity. Characters like G.W. Bush and his siblings, Willard Romney and his brood, Donny Trump, and the rest of the 2015 Republican clown car have not “worked” a day in their lives. Romney made his money leveraging other people’s money and work. Bush is a “consultant” who gets paid for access and connections. One of his big money clients was the notorious Lehman Brothers “investment” firm, one of the groups responsible for crashing the world’s economy in 2007. If you don’t believe they paid Jeb big money to help them get a bailout from Jeb’s little brother, the President, you are too dumb to be led anywhere but over a cliff. And a leash would be required even for that minor task. People who have never worked at any real task are incapable of providing leadership to people who do work. President Obama’s academic and social work record is open for even the dullest reader to analyze. His accomplishments as a community organizer, author, lawyer, and Senator dwarf those of the entire Republican party. Likewise, the most effective leaders in American business history have been hands-on scientists, engineers, technicians, farmers, doctors, lawyers, skilled tradesmen, and even a few lawyers. The spoiled children of the wealthy elite are only occasionally endowed with a work and service ethic (Teddy Roosevelt, for example) that makes them worthy of leadership roles. Assuming otherwise, is the kind of thinking that creates an inbred royalty class.

Generational Notes

The constant babble from the Millennial media is the sad story that Millennials are working more for less than their parents. I don’t know who these parents are, but I know the Millennials I know aren’t even in the game with the Boomers I worked beside in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Obviously, the children of the 1% are the same useless, entitled, lazy, boring brats they’ve been since humans started farming, serving the ruling class in various armies, and working until we can’t and get tossed into the rubbish heap. The working class has put in 60-90 hour work weeks for generations and the most recent batch of working class kids has deluded itself into believing that a degree in social studies, English or some foreign language, history, music, art appreciation, or any of the so-called “liberal arts” qualifies them for a life gazing into the distance from their corner office. Four extra years of studying your navel is not a qualification.

A friend, whose 20-something son still lives in Mom’s basement doing nothing useful, says, “This generation wants to start off where their parents ended up.” I’ve noticed that, too. After working, usually as waiter or boutique store clerk, for a year or two way too many of these over-age children “come home” and stagnate in their parents’ basement until . . . we don’t know what these bozos think they’re going to be doing when the parents die. If they are planning on an inheritance from their X-gen parents, they have been paying no attention at all to popular economic forecasts. With that in mind, the Millennials are really deluding themselves if they think their X-gen parents are going to pass on the inheritance they receive from the Boomer grandparents. Honestly, all of this depressing financial grasshopper “planning” makes me glad that my own life expectancy is fairly limited. I don’t need to be around to watch the sky fall on yours and my goofy grandkids.

And it is going to fall.

American worker income has fallen in all areas since 2000 (Bush-Cheney, if you are historically deficient) and there is nothing on the horizon to indicate that will change anytime soon. In fact, it’s probably likely nothing will change for the better in the country’s near future. All signs point to a gradual-to-rapid decline in American world influence, industrial strength, citizen education levels, wealth, quality of life, and practically every other marker with which we and the rest of the world use to indicate who’s who on the international organizational chart. The chart (at left) pretends to explain why going into debt for college is so important, but it’s not that convincing. Mostly, it demonstrates why kids who live in their parents’ basements are pretty much useless and, to no one’s surprise, incapable of producing an income. The majority of the “less than high school diploma” and “high school diploma” kids are the video game, social network, YouTube obsessed crowd or the usual street bangers who have been off of the economic grid for decades. The are certainly not manual laborers, skilled or semi-skilled. The reason that many of those jobs go to “foreign workers” (In the USofA, that is probably the silliest oxymoron of all.) is that too many young US citizens do not qualify as “workers” in any sense of the word. They barely qualify as warm bodies.

#115 Cowardice or Insanity? (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Most humans despise cowards. In politics or religion, we're a lot more lenient, apparently, toward cowards but as a group of humans we're fairly consistent in our disgust towards people, especially men, who act in cowardly ways for selfish purposes.  For some reason, our legal system works specially hard to delineate crazy cowards from the "sane" ones. 

Cowardice is a sort of insanity, isn't it?  A coward is someone who is afraid of, and over-reacts to, an overstated or non-existent threat.  Being afraid of a real threat isn't cowardice, it's "discretion" as a famous beer drinker once claimed. 

Most humans are able to overcome their fears to do the things that need to be done.  Performers and public speakers are regularly victims of stage fright.  Soldiers are almost always terrified of flying bullets.  Voters are always scared shitless of voting for the "wrong" candidates.  But we get past it and make our best shot at doing the right thing.  Most of us do, anyway.

Some of us do extraordinary things because of, or in spite of, our fears.  Sometimes those extraordinary things should have never been done, sometimes they are the acts of heroism.  The line between fear-induced viciousness and bravery is a fuzzy gray mark in the sand.  In war, one man's bravery is another man's horrific act of terror. 

Somehow, in politics one man's act of cowardice can often become a large group's rallying cause.  George Bush's timidity as a young man, for example.  Little George, as his friends called him, away from the protection of his parents was terrified of just about everything.  He crawled under his mother's skirts to avoid the Vietnam War.  But delivering flowers to generals was too much for him, so he went AWOL for the last year and a half of his safe and protected National Guard obligation.  Nothing happened, but he was still terrified of life in general, so he hid in a martini glass and behind the haze of coke smoke. 

Finally, in his mid-40s he realized that he was about as safe as a human can be on this planet and he decided to peek out at the world without the protection of drugs and booze.  Still too scary.

So he invented a personal god with whom to communicate his fears, insecurities, and paranoia.  With the help of a squad of personal religious advisors, Little George invented a universe that centered around his fears and nutty drug-induced belief system.  Being the most susceptible of men, Georgie's "religion" made him a simple-minded tool of the folks who wanted a Stepford President.  For some reason, millions of conservative American voters fell in love with the idea of a cowardly kitty Presidency. 

From the mouths of children may come truth, but what comes from the mouths of fools and cowards?  I fear that we're going to find out in the next four years.

In Case You Think being A Christian Is Easy, or Possible

76 Things Banned in Leviticus

Here’s chapter and verse on a more-or-less comprehensive list of things banned in the Leviticus book of the bible. A decent number of them are punishable by death.

Unless you’ve never done any of them (and 54 to 56 are particularly tricky), perhaps it’s time to lay off quoting 18:22 for a while?

1. Burning any yeast or honey in offerings to God (2:11)

2. Failing to include salt in offerings to God (2:13)

3. Eating fat (3:17)

4. Eating blood (3:17)

5. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve witnessed (5:1)

6. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve been told about (5:1)

7. Touching an unclean animal (5:2)

8. Carelessly making an oath (5:4)

9. Deceiving a neighbour about something trusted to them (6:2)

10. Finding lost property and lying about it (6:3)

11. Bringing unauthorised fire before God (10:1)

12. Letting your hair become unkempt (10:6)

13. Tearing your clothes (10:6)

14. Drinking alcohol in holy places (bit of a problem for Catholics, this ‘un) (10:9)

15. Eating an animal which doesn’t both chew cud and has a divided hoof (cf: camel, rabbit, pig) (11:4-7)

16. Touching the carcass of any of the above (problems here for rugby) (11:8)

17. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any seafood without fins or scales (11:10-12)

18. Eating – or touching the carcass of - eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. (11:13-19)

19. Eating – or touching the carcass of – flying insects with four legs, unless those legs are jointed (11:20-22)

20. Eating any animal which walks on all four and has paws (good news for cats) (11:27)

21. Eating – or touching the carcass of – the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon (11:29)

22. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any creature which crawls on many legs, or its belly (11:41-42)

23. Going to church within 33 days after giving birth to a boy (12:4)

24. Going to church within 66 days after giving birth to a girl (12:5)

25. Having sex with your mother (18:7)

26. Having sex with your father’s wife (18:8)

27. Having sex with your sister (18:9)

28. Having sex with your granddaughter (18:10)

29. Having sex with your half-sister (18:11)

30. Having sex with your biological aunt (18:12-13)

31. Having sex with your uncle’s wife (18:14)

32. Having sex with your daughter-in-law (18:15)

33. Having sex with your sister-in-law (18:16)

34. Having sex with a woman and also having sex with her daughter or granddaughter (bad news for Alan Clark) (18:17)

35. Marrying your wife’s sister while your wife still lives (18:18)

36. Having sex with a woman during her period (18:19)

37. Having sex with your neighbour’s wife (18:20)

38. Giving your children to be sacrificed to Molek (18:21)

39. Having sex with a man “as one does with a woman” (18:22)

40. Having sex with an animal (18:23)

41. Making idols or “metal gods” (19:4)

42. Reaping to the very edges of a field (19:9)

43. Picking up grapes that have fallen in your vineyard (19:10)

44. Stealing (19:11)

45. Lying (19:11)

46. Swearing falsely on God’s name (19:12)

47. Defrauding your neighbour (19:13)

48. Holding back the wages of an employee overnight (not well observed these days) (19:13)

49. Cursing the deaf or abusing the blind (19:14)

50. Perverting justice, showing partiality to either the poor or the rich (19:15)

51. Spreading slander (19:16)

52. Doing anything to endanger a neighbour’s life (19:16)

53. Seeking revenge or bearing a grudge (19:18)

54. Mixing fabrics in clothing (19:19)

55. Cross-breeding animals (19:19)

56. Planting different seeds in the same field (19:19)

57. Sleeping with another man’s slave (19:20)

58. Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it (19:23)

59. Practising divination or seeking omens (tut, tut astrology) (19:26)

60. Trimming your beard (19:27)

61. Cutting your hair at the sides (19:27)

62. Getting tattoos (19:28)

63. Making your daughter prostitute herself (19:29)

64. Turning to mediums or spiritualists (19:31)

65. Not standing in the presence of the elderly (19:32)

66. Mistreating foreigners – “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born” (19:33-34)

67. Using dishonest weights and scales (19:35-36)

68. Cursing your father or mother (punishable by death) (20:9)

69. Marrying a prostitute, divorcee or widow if you are a priest (21:7,13)

70. Entering a place where there’s a dead body as a priest (21:11)

71. Slaughtering a cow/sheep and its young on the same day (22:28)

72. Working on the Sabbath (23:3)

73. Blasphemy (punishable by stoning to death) (24:14)

74. Inflicting an injury; killing someone else’s animal; killing a person must be punished in kind (24:17-22)

75. Selling land permanently (25:23)

76. Selling an Israelite as a slave (foreigners are fine) (25:42)

#114 No News is the Usual News (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Back when he was funny, before he became a paid Republican shill, Dennis Miller commented that the news was nothing more than a litany of catastrophes, natural disasters, and crime events. He called the news the "thank God that shit didn't happen to me" show.  Mostly, he's right.  The news tells us nothing useful about the state of the nation or the world.  We don't learn what's going on in our communities or home states.  After an hour of network news, we won't have learned anything new about the world or the economy or science.  We'll have been entertained by crimes that are solved or unsolved, big winds that have blown down other people's homes, and a car crash or two.  Today's news programs are more like reality TV than information sources.  Because of that, fewer and fewer Americans are turning to television or newspapers for information.

In a last minute bum's rush, the media is pretending to have suddenly realized there is stuff to report about the Presidential race this year.  Don't let that fool you into believing that the news is becoming more relevant.  It's just a marketing tactic. 

Bush has been given a free ride for four years, plus.  Long before he ran his first race for public office, Bush was a drunk and a doper with a criminal record.  He was a spoiled rich kid draft dodger who went AWOL from a safe and pointless rich kids' National Guard job.  He failed at every job he'd had and, because of his stupidity and incompetence, Republican power brokers picked him for their puppet candidate for Texas governor and, later, President.  His one and only claim to competence came when he was given a token position for a baseball team whose new stadium was built on seized private land and paid for with public financing.  This is a dedicated capitalist?  Sounds more like a corporate commie, to me.

Bush's handlers ran vicious, amoral, lying campaigns for every office he won and the media let them get away with it.  Why?  Because the media expected corporate and ruling class tax breaks from a Bush Administration.  And they got what they expected and a whole lot more.  Bush has handed over the environment, ownership of public airwaves, national natural resources, and the federal reserves to his corporate criminal buddies. 

All of this went on without a whisper from the national media, who are the same folks who received many of the benefits of Bush's corrupt administration.  These people are so counterfeit that they have absolutely no difficulty taking advantage of the awful catastrophe of September 2001 for their own financial gain.  As long as they were raking in bushels of cash from the ineptitude and corruption of the Bush Administration, they were happy to avoid doing the job they pretended to be doing. 

Suddenly, the golden goose appears to be dying.  Publishers are amazed to find that they had been losing money for the last several years because the only way they can attract readers is to offer their newspapers at a loss.  Because so few of their subscribers actually read anything more than the sports page, advertisers found the effectiveness of their ads had declined to near-uselessness.  Television networks are experiencing the same problems.  Their "hard hitting" bobble-head reporters and their grinning talking head anchors weren't attracting viewers.  For the first time in modern history, the major media had become the minor source of information for the majority of citizens. 

Young people and literate older folks get their news from a variety of internet sources and public television and radio. The illiterate youth and old folks get what little they know from Oprah and Letterman and the Late Show.  The really stupid get their misinformation from talk radio or, worse, Fox News.  Hardly anyone looking for information reads their local papers or watches network news.  This has left a major corporate force looking at vanishing income and influence. 

Their cure for this loss of credibility is to pretend that they have relevance in the final moments of the 2004 election.  Suddenly, the major media is lightly reporting on a few of the many defects in Bush's "character" and an equally small number of the administration's failures of competence.  They've waited long enough that they won't have a significant effect on the election, but they've done just enough actual news reporting to have created a little spin for themselves.  They have enough fingers in other pies that they don't want to mess up the good thing Bush has provided them, but they need to hang on to their core, media business.  Hoping to eat their cake and eat it too, the media is trying to walk a fine line between actually reporting the facts and only reporting enough of the bad stuff that they can pretend to be "fair and impartial" without pissing off the Bushies or throwing the election to Kerry. 

Will it work?  For the short term, probably.  For the long term, not a chance. 

The characters fronting the media have earned a national reputation slightly below used car salesmen and politicians.  Nobody with half a brain believes anything they hear on the tube and damn few people take the time to read "news" that isn't sports related.  We might be entertained by their minimal attempt to shed some light on Iraq, the President's lies, or some other insignificant bit of actual news, but I can't imagine how the media can ever win back the trust of the American public.  Now that it's obvious to even the dumbest of Joe Public that the media doesn't make an effort to be "fair and impartial," we're all looking for media sources that reflect our own take on the world.  Big media can't provide something for everyone because there isn't anything that we all want. 

The country has been split into dozens of special citizen interests and we are never again going to be able to say, "united we stand."  We stand as individuals in a Babylon of a country with only our friends and neighbors (at best) to share a small speck of culture. We can thank corporate media for their part in disintegrating America into such an insignificant and disorganized mess.  We are thanking them by ignoring their newscasts and by hanging up on their telephone solicitors.

#113 Defining Swing Voters (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The two political parties are hard at work defining and trying to attract the 2004 election's swing voters.  I thought I'd help.  There are some single issue voters who are so easy to define that they are laughable.  If they weren't actually going to cast their votes, I would be laughing a lot more these days.  These simple-minded folks think that the office of President is completely oriented around decisions regarding gays, guns, abortion, oil, and Israel. 

The J. Eddie Hoover homophobe crowd is desperate to keep itself in the closet.  GeeWiz Bush, Jimmy Swaggart, Patty Robertson, and the rest of the redneck closet queens are terrified that, if homosexuality becomes less stigmatized, the odds that they'll meet a man they can't resist will be raised to an intolerably, irresistibly high point.   Just like their cross-dressing FBI hero, they want to keep their orientation behind locked doors.

Passing a Constitutional Amendment to protect those wimps from themselves is a waste of Congressional effort.  Passing a Constitutional Amendment to limit the rights of American citizens is a terrible desecration of one of the world's rare sacred documents.  Pretending that this is a critical issue at this point in our country's history, is nothing more than a distraction. 

The NRA is still bleating the old Second Amendment misinterpretation and pretending that assault weapons are used for hunting deer and other scary prey.  In a rational nation, the endorsement of the NRA would be as powerful as the support of the White Power folks.  Of course, a rational nation would be carefully considering the causes of so much loss of life due to guns.  A really rational nation would be upset that most of the gun fatalities are caused by the victims' family members.  There are more than enough guns in the country to eliminate every life form in North America.  Kerry hasn't advocated collecting civilian weapons and beating them into plowshares.  He has recommended removing fully automatic weapons from the hands of nutcases, most of whom are Bush fans.  The NRA represents gun manufacturers, the most vile corporations among a country full of vicious and amoral corporations.  Anyone who gives a damn about those folks is not capable of making moral decisions for themselves, let alone casting a vote for the most powerful office in the world. 

Much of the Midwest and even more of the southern vote is wrapped around another single-issue; abortion.  Again, you're either for it or against it.  Supposedly, that makes it a Kerry or Bush issue.  Kerry is hardly "for" abortion, but he's unconvinced that a Constitutional amendment banning abortion would be any wiser than the Constitutional amendment that banned alcohol.  Making ordinary citizens into criminals because they do things to themselves that others disapprove of is usually poor government practice.  Bush, on the other hand, would add any number of dumbass amendments to the Constitution; from banning flag abuse to abortion to prayer in public schools to a meaningless, easily circumvented balanced budget amendment.  Bush's list of idiot Constitutional amendments makes it obvious that he does not view the Constitution as the basis for our country's past success.  He thinks it's a coloring book for idiots.  So, the folks who think this single issue is critical to the life of the nation can be classified into the "dumb as a brick" category.

Another single-interest group is the cheap oil crowd.  A huge number of urban folks commute hundreds of miles a week and they believe the most important thing government can do is to keep fuel prices low so that they can afford their driving addiction.  This group is solidly among the bunch of folks who believe that a lack of planning on their part constitutes an emergency for the rest of us.  Not only do they drive a lot of pointless miles, but they drive huge, inefficient vehicles and expect manicured highways for their driving pleasure.  Everyone who has designed a sane, low mileage, moderate energy lifestyle is subsidizing these overweight energy sinks and the commuters believe they deserve their particular form of welfare.  I can't explain the logic behind that assumption.  I don't understand the existence of country music or Harley Davidson motorcycles, either.   However, I think I can accurately put this group into a "I want my MTV" category, folks who can't tell the difference between the words "want" and "need."

Apparently, the orthodox Jewish vote is among the current swinging crowd.  In the past, Jewish voters, especially orthodox Jewish voters, have been traditional, almost universally Democrats.  Today, their focus has narrowed.  Civil rights is no longer on their radar, anti-Semitism in the general population is not a big deal, and they're left with one election issue; Israel.  Either you're for Israel or you're again' 'em.  Obviously, this is not a US national security issue.  Israel falling or standing has no long range value to US interests.  We pump billions of support dollars into Israel and receive nothing of value in return.  Yeah, yeah, Israel is "an oasis of civilization in the middle of a continent of heretics."  Outside of superstitious fantasies, Israel is pretty much a black hole in which we've been pouring US tax money for fifty years.  Voting the interests of a foreign country is treason, at best.  So, we can group the orthodox Jewish vote into the un-American activities category. 

I suppose there are a few dozen other single-issue voter groups that I haven't identified.  The fact is, single-issue voters are citizens who are not sophisticated enough to be allowed to play with sharp objects.  Voting for an office as demanding, and vital to the world's safety, as the US Presidency is a complex and mature activity.  Picking one issue as most important, out of the hundreds of critical issues the President will address, is a childish view of the world.  Children shouldn't be allowed to vote and age isn't the only criteria that defines a child.  People who want the world to wrap around the only issue with which they've managed to form an opinion are not capable of making adult decisions.  They're definitely not capable of making decisions for the rest of the world.  They are absolutely incapable of making decisions for me. 

I think it's time that we consider reinstating some sort of intelligence test at the polls.  I understand that concept has a racist history and I also understand that, statistically, it's possible that a political awareness test might remove a larger percentage of voters of color than white voters.  On the other hand, there seems to be an excess of dumb white voters and they still make up the majority in all national elections.  Establishing a minimum standard of comprehension voter standard is a concept whose time has come.  A national political comprehension test would disallow the stupid, the senile, and the single-issue voter from the political system.  A little testing could go a long way toward protecting democracy from despots and corporate corruption.

#112 The Lesser of Two Evils (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Since 1968, every election in which I've voted, for every significant office, state or federal, the choices have been the selection of the lesser of two evils; Demolican or Republicrat, conservative or less conservative, Tweedly Dee or Tweedly Dumb.  Since I began my voting career writing-in my Presidential candidate, Eugene McCarthy, I pretty much did the same for every other office on the ballot.  Except for the rare exception of a local candidate who I know and believe might be uncorrupted enough to do some good in political office, I have written-in a candidate for almost every office for which I've voted in the last 36 years.  If I didn't write-in someone I thought could do the job, I voted for one of the alternative party candidates.  Maybe that's a wasted vote, but I don't think so. 

The only vote I feel I ever wasted was in 1996, here in Minnesota, for the office of state governor.  The race was tight, too close to call between the Demolicans or Republicrats.  An alternative party was fronting a complete political unknown, Independence Party candidate Jesse Ventura, for the office and while I thought Ventura would make a terrific governor I thought the Republicrat, Norm Coleman, would be a disaster for the state.  Coleman was a corporate welfare promoter for sports teams and crooked construction companies as the mayor of St. Paul and I thought bringing that attitude to the state government would be a disaster.  I voted for Hubert Humphrey II, the Demolican, a candidate I despised from his pitiful performance as the state auditor. 

I was disgusted with myself as I cast my vote.  I wasn't voting for someone I respected, for the first time in my life, I was voting against someone I despised.  Even more disgusting, I had a choice on the ballot.  I had a choice that I thought was better than anyone I could have written-in for the office.  Out of cowardice, fear of the more obvious evil, I voted for someone who I thought had no chance of doing the job well, but who had a chance of winning. 

As if fate was trying to teach me a lesson in civic responsibility, Jesse Ventura won.  For the first time in my life, I had a chance to vote for both someone I respected and someone who had a chance of winning and I missed it.  For a brief moment in my life, I was a conservative, a political coward, and I was rewarded for that failure when I watched Jesse's election celebration and knew that I'd had nothing to do with that success.  I never felt less of an American than the evening of Ventura's inaugural celebration.  I will never again vote for the lesser of two evils.  A recent bumper sticker reads, "Kerry sucks less."  I'm not convinced that is a terrific endorsement.  Bush, on the other hand, sucks more.  That doesn't make the choice much easier. 

I'm an American.  I don't give a damn about the "rights" of international corporations, dictators, kings and queens, the idle rich, or any other piece of worthless human crap.  The positive history of this country is all about the battle between the middle class and the inherited power class.  I'm back in the war and I don't care if we win it this year or any other election.  If I do my part, the rest is up to you.

#111 The Liberals in Congress (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

To explain the many stupid things done in Washington, Bush often blames "the liberals in Congress."  The four-legged fools who think that Bush could identify a problem if it was pecking a hole in the top of his head repeat the chant "the liberals in Congress" as if it was actual information.  You could count the liberals in Congress on the fingers of one hand.  If there are that many.  Many real liberals thought the one and only liberal left in Congress, Paul Wellstone, died in 2002.  If John Kerry and John Edwards are examples of what passes for a congressional liberal today, then this country has a severe liberal leadership deficit. 

For the last two decades, counting the number of liberals in Washington has been a grossly overrated activity.  Democrats are not necessarily liberal, regardless of the ignorant and boneheaded claims of the Bushies.  Those fools think anyone who isn't to the right of Adolph Hitler is a liberal.  Their definition of "conservative" is so simplistic that it resembles a meaningless chant, "pro-life good, pro-choice bad."  On every issue of government action, the neo-cons are radically socialist. 

Remember, Nazi Germany was called The Socialist Republic of Germany.  The definition of socialism is "a social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community."  We have allowed our government to redistribute national wealth to less than 1% of the population and we have allowed a tiny number of international corporations to absorb the majority of the nation's economic activity.  In our case, the production and distribution is exclusively within the means, and under the control, of a socialist elite, just like the old Soviet Union.  Just like the Soviet Union's nomenclature, that elite is uninterested in the welfare of the nation, its security, or the future of its citizens.  If things get bad enough, they'll move to a country they have yet to wreak.  They are no more the loyal citizens of the United States than were the mobsters who destroyed the Soviet Union.  Who knows, when it gets bad enough here maybe our mobsters will move to Russia?

The Bushies would like you to believe that anyone elected as a Democrat is a liberal, for the sake of their simplified, inaccurate political propaganda.  The reality is that very few southern or western Democrats hold a single liberal political view.  Outside of Teddy Kennedy, it's hard to find a northern Democrat who could be seriously defined as "liberal."  Leiberman, Gore's running mate in 2000, is more consistently conservative than anyone in the Bush Administration.  Those of you with a few functioning memory cells might remember that Gore was a good deal less than liberal, to the point that Frank Zappa suffered a trip to Washington to argue that Gore's attempt to censor music lyrics violated the First Amendment.  Gore's wife, Tipper, is as radically socially conservative as any Republican. 

Since the definition of conservative is someone who is limited to "traditional views and values" and tends "to oppose change," it's hard to imagine anyone who isn't conservative getting elected in the current US climate.  The current voting generation of Americans is timid, unimaginative, politically ignorant, and under serious economic pressure.  That is not a formula for electing people who are "not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded."  That is the definition of "liberal."  If you can find fault in any of those characteristics, you will be happy to be called a conservative.  Most intelligent humans, especially Americans, would be happy to aspire to be liberal, knowing that it is nearly impossible for a human to consistently hold to those values.

Today's problems were created by conservatives of both parties.  In fact, various flavors of conservatives are all that either party is capable of producing.  Conservatives sponsored by labor unions, conservatives sponsored by corporate executives, conservatives sponsored by government employees or government agencies, or, worst of all, conservatives sponsored by religious organizations.  Anyone with a lick of sense would be desperate to see a liberal find a position of power in this stagnate society.  Unless we all have to suffer years of another Great Depression, I don't see it happening.  We are not experiencing desperate times and without desperation humans never resort to creativity. 

#110 Misunderstanding Higher Education (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

This week, I listened to one of the dumbest discussions, ever, on higher education and its costs and benefits. The discussion was on a local public radio show, a show that is usually fairly low-brow. The people involved were all advocates and employees of universities who have been draining millions of dollars from local taxpayers. Of course, there was no alternative argument being presented because people who work for a living are busy working, not creating fanciful statistics to promote not working as an alternative to productivity. Or something like that.

The discussion was about how expensive a public or private college education has become and if that expense is justified. Other than chanting how “expenses” have increased and how those expenses are necessary to provide a quality education experience, absolute no useful or creditable information was given to explain why universities’ expenses have increased far faster than the inflation rate. Mostly, the folks from academia babbled useless statistics about how obtaining a college education will result in higher income over a lifetime.

The fact that 80% of the currently available jobs do not require a college degree and that future projections for jobs in this country anticipate even lower educational requirements didn’t bother the folks from academia. They have this worthless statistic that “proves” that a person with a bachelor’s degree will earn one million dollars more, in a lifetime, than a person with only a high school diploma. If a statistic was ever able to lie outright, that would be one of the most dishonest statements ever made by a human.

Let’s examine a pair of situations that would fall into this statistic. My brother, for example, is an intelligent, hard working person from a middle class background who has been employed since he was 19 and probably represents the average working guy who never went to college. On average, I’d suspect that he is as typical of the upper-middle of the type of person who hasn’t been to college and has been “disadvantaged” by that deficit. He was not a particularly good student in high school. He married young and never had the resources or motivation to pursue further education once he found work and started his adult life. He’s hard working, contributes to his community, and has a small circle of friends and family who depend on him to be steady and reliable. He’s had a steady job working for a salt mine in central Kansas for the last twenty-plus years and has grossed about $600,000-750,000 lifetime income.

George Bush might represent the upper-middle of the type of person who does go to college and obtains a college credential. He’s dumb as a post, lazy, unmotivated, drug and alcohol addicted, and so irresponsible that his parents shipped him to another state so that he wouldn’t embarrass the family when his father was running for the US Senate. He managed to be an embarrassment from half-way across the country, but he still managed to stumble through to a Harvard bachelor’s degree. George failed at every adult enterprise he ever attempted and his parents bailed him out of several criminal adventures with their wealth and power. George’s lifetime income is still on the ascent, but it wouldn’t be impractical to estimate that he’ll attract more than $1,000,000,000 in his lifetime. Using that comparison, you could say that a minimal college degree is worth a billion dollars in a lifetime. After all, what else is different between these two men?

If that kind of logic is the result of higher education, I think we can easily understand why the country is sinking into idiocy. There are at least two kinds of people who attend universities: 1) motivated and intellectually curious people who are hoping to find an intellectually stimulating environment and 2) the spoiled offspring of the ruling elite who have to show minimal intelligence as a rite of passage into the country’s power structure.

Generally, the second group will do a much better job of boosting the economic statistics justifying a college education. The inbred, brain-dead children of families with power are far more likely to have the connections needed to obtain high paying jobs in the Misfortune 500. If, like G.W. Bush, the kids are too foolish to hold a job, the family will invest a few million until they find a niche where Junior can’t possibly fail. In Bush’s case, they found a group of pro baseball investors who wanted a figurehead to front their organization, which sort of implies that they wanted to shield themselves from the public eye. One way or another, the demented and limited offspring of the rich will inherit the family’s massive wealth and they’ll hand it to financial advisors who will continue to add to the family fortune, and Junior’s income statement.

The more inspiring products of higher education are likely to become the financial advisors of the first group. Failing that aspiration, they’ll become doctors, lawyers, engineers, and scientists, most of who don’t generate the income necessary to prove the point that a college education is a terrific financial investment for the children of the middle class. The numbers of liberal arts degree holders who can be found shuffling books at Barnes and Nobel, managing coffee inventories at Starbucks, and reminding pimply illegal aliens to ask if their customers “want fries with that?” is as depressing as it is humorous.

A little while back, Paul Erlich, of The Population Bomb fame, described his experiences as a dean of Stanford University. The financial power in that institution was held by the liberal arts folks, who had plenty of time for politics since their schools were under little-to-no demand from students. The science and engineering instructors are teaching classes, managing research, and publishing or perishing in their competitive fields. Even the deans of those schools are involved in doing productive work, so their representation in political meetings is minimal.

All of that results in liberal arts profs campaigning for salaries commensurate with their scientific contemporaries. The fact that someone with a doctorate in social studies or modern Greek literature would be hustling French fries in the real world has no effect on these discussions. Among many idiocies, this is the main reason that the operating costs of universities are out of control.

The fact that the personalities and capabilities (financial and intellectual) of people who generally obtain a degree are dissimilar to those who don’t hasn’t slowed the higher education propaganda machines. Logic, facts, and economics have no effect on their demand for public financing of what has become a private venture. When the average middle-class person can no longer consider obtaining a college degree because of the cost, state universities have lost their reason for being and, more importantly, the reason they obtain taxpayer financing.

#109 Legal Recreational Drugs (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The current federal administration and Minnesota's state governor and big fans of Reagan's War on Drugs.  The argument seems to be that any drug that doesn't make a drug company exec (political contributor) rich causes irreparable damage to society.  Once upon a time, I thought the conservatives' anti-drug case was based on the conservative terror that somewhere someone might be having fun.  Not anymore.  As long as the people having fun are rich, old, white and fat, we're likely to promote their case with an advertising campaign.

Today it's obvious that money is the core to the War on Drugs.  Recreational drugs are the hot sellers in several drug companies' product lines.  If Viagra isn't a free-from-social-value recreational drug, marijuana has to be one of the most beneficial medicines ever discovered.  Pfizer's Viagra (and it's recreational buddies Celextra, Lilly's Cialis, Senetek's Invicorp, Bayer's Levitra, Propecia, Alprostadil, Uprima, and the never ending, constantly growing list of male erectile enhancement drugs) have only one function; to help old fat white men get a hard-on so that they can engage in recreational sex.  If that isn't a meaningless recreational drug, I can't imagine what kind of definition you would use for "recreational drugs."  No activity on this planet could be much less critical to the quality of life on this planet than old fat white guys wallowing on top of their trophy wives. 

It's interesting that the Bushies' argument to protect the income of their drug peddler buddies isn't doing the job they claim it will do.  All those profits were supposed to inspire drug companies to create more lifesaving drugs, but new drugs are not happening at the speed that they were developed before the current medicine=money culture.  In fact, the creation of new drugs is slowly coming to a halt in the US.  After an incredibly slow start, European medical-use drug development is cranking up in capacity and quality.  In a few years, American drug companies are going to want to have their new "intellectual property" laws defanged so that they can steal the patented work of their European competitors. 

A few years later, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea will join the competition.  Those nations are already providing much of the US manufacturing capacity.  Our lazy, greedy executive class gave away the computer business by "teaching" those countries how to manufacturer, design, and market personal computers.  Those same fools are repeating their mismanagement foolishness with drugs.  The upside is, since US manufacturers have dedicated themselves to creating and selling recreational drugs, we have to hope that the rest of the world will take up their slack and develop drugs for medical purposes.

In the meantime, American dope peddlers are pumping out recreational sex drugs, spending millions on television ads promoting their dope, and spending millions bribing docs and politicians to keep the pipeline open between their dope-peddling docs and the dope-abusing, impotent, fat, old white men.  You have to suspect that the Mafia is getting jealous.  In the past, when the Mob gets jealous they get political and violent (as if there is a difference).  I wonder if we're about to be entertained by gang wars between drug companies and street dope peddlers?  That would be fun. 

What's the beef about recreational drugs?  Don't ask me.  I dislike all of our "victimless crime" laws.  If people want to dope themselves into oblivion, even death, as long as they don't take anyone else down with them, I could care less.  Life is hard, humans are grossly over-represented in the world's animal population, resources are dwindling, and you could make about 4 billion arguments as to why people should be allowed to dope themselves into oblivion.  The world economy is such a mess that most people have two choices, sell themselves to the highest bidder or die.  Prostitution is only a crime when a rich man doesn't make a profit from it.  Employees are prostituting themselves to the employers every day.  Men and women have been sacrificing their health and time to employers for hundreds of years but nobody seems to think that is a moral crime.  It's only a crime when someone makes the sale without an employer middleman taking most of the profit.  The ultimate prostitute is a soldier.  Not only does a soldier offer his own life for money, but he'll take other, often innocent, lives for the same hard cash.  But that well populated with victims occupation is often honored in our cultures.  In our current "war," which is waged to steal the oil resources of North Africa, we're forcing National Guard members (who, mostly, got into the guard as a way to get to play with expensive toys, pretending to be soldiers, for extra cash, as a pointless part-time job) to kill and die for money.  A little recreational drug use, in comparison to that activity, has to be qualified as harmless.

My complaint about the Viagra-strain of recreational drugs is the inconsistency displayed by a culture that allows its ruling class legal access to recreational drugs and turns violent when the working class expects the same courtesy.  The rich can drink and drive without expecting serious consequences when they kill bystanders.  They can have meaningless―and conceptually disgusting―old man sex and have their dope choices sanctified by national televised advertising campaigns.  If someone grows a single marijuana plant in his backyard, federal and state SWAT teams will descend from black, noiseless helicopters to burn the crop, confiscate the grower's property, and imprison everyone in the neighborhood who might have "profited" by the illegal substance.  If we actually set out to create an irrational society with an incomprehensible Through the Looking Glass legal system, we couldn't have done a better job. 

#108 Hard Work? Damn! (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The first Presidential debate was interesting.  The one thing we know about George W. Bush, other than his nearly-perfected incompetence, is that he is chronically lazy.  The lil' feller has taken the easy way out of every situation in his life.  His first "business success" involved being put into a non-participatory management position in a pro baseball team, using other people's money and other people's talents to actually manage the team.  George's job required him to sit behind the home team's bench and look involved.  He mostly looked confused, when he wasn't napping.  By all accounts, this job tested George's stamina severely.  He had to take a number of vacations to recover from the daily routine at his seat behind the bench.  But he managed it and his partners sold the team and gave him his share in the profits.  It helped that he hadn't had to make an investment, originally, because his parents weren't inclined to loan Georgie any more cash due to his past misadventures with their money. 

From that great success, Georgie went on to vacation at the Texas Governors' mansion.  His tenure in that office was another rousing success.  He managed to turn one of the nation's worst education systems into the clear winner of that contest.  Nobody has a more poorly funded education system, after George's education plan went into action.  Texas kids will be thanking Georgie for decades as they flip burgers and cash their welfare checks.  George worked so hard as governor that nearly half of the time he spent in that office was "working vacation" time.  Texans got their money's worth out of the little rich kid. 

The first debate was clearly a test of the President's strength.  Since he has no character or intelligence, the only personality trait that could be tested was strength.  As the debate went south on him, he began to whine about the "hard work" the Presidency requires.  All these Presidential issues--the mess in Iraq, the economy, criminal  activities among his friends and associates, and the job of being President -- were wearing him down. Little George is used to taking a extended break any time life's complexities begin to wear on his limited capabilities.  He'd done exactly that throughout his first term in office, however, the debate was going to go on with or without him, so he had to stick to it.  George isn't much of a stick-to-it-kind-of-guy.  He was desperately needing a vacation trip to Crawford less than 5 minutes into the debate. 

From that point on, he constantly returned to his whining refrain of how much "hard work" was involved in being President.  If being President were an appointed office, I'd feel sorry for the dumb bastard.  Since he went to great difficulty to corrupt the selection process, including stealing the election from the actual winner, I hope he chokes on the responsibility.  Even more to the point, since I believe that his lies regarding the reasons for the Iraq Invasion were nothing less than treasonous, I'd like to see Georgie put in some serious hard time for his criminal acts.  Busting stones in a hot Texas sun would be an apt punishment for his efforts against the flag.  Ideally, joining him would be his CRAP buddies and, especially, Karl Rove.  Those chubby cheeked draft dodgers would be completely different people after a decade or two behind bars.  They might even develop a bit of character.

#107 An Impossible Dream (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Bobby Dylan sang, in "Talking World War Three Blues," that "we're all havin' that same dream."  Dylan was talking about being the last person left on earth after the final war.  Management's dream is that execs can screw off and their low paid employees will take up the slack for them.  It's a dream because it doesn't make a lick of sense and, on the rare occasion that it appears to be working, it won't last. Like a good night's sleep, this pipedream comes to an end way too soon.  The simple fact is that corporate motivation is directed top down and when the leadership's flow of activity, energy, and ideas stops flowing, the business is heading for bad times. 

While it's possible to convince people to work harder than their bosses for a short time, it only makes sense that the people receiving the most benefit should do the most work.  When that isn't true, there better be a clear, available, and direct chain of succession or the most productive people will look for other opportunities or put their energies into more interesting activities.  In business, survival of the fittest often looks like rats leaving sinking ships.  There is no low-level fix to inactive management, so anyone with the skills to be somewhere else is likely to start shipping resumes when it becomes obvious that management isn't on a temporary vacation. 

For everyone else, the company becomes a place where the goals are incredibly simple.  If the execs aren't working, they have no effective way to know that no one else is working.  "Looking busy" isn't a difficult task in an organization that has minimal management.  On the rare occasion that management is in the vicinity of activity, it only takes a little ass-kissing and random motion to convince inactive management that something is being done.  It may not be work, but it looks like work to someone who isn't familiar with functional activity.  If you've been employed, you've experienced this traditional American phenomenon.  Most large companies generate much more random activity than directed, functional work.  Unfortunately, way too many small and mid-sized companies sink themselves imitating dysfunctional Misfortune 500 disaster zones. 

As consumers I think we've come to expect lethargy and incompetence from the management of companies with which we do business.  My home town recently acquired a new grocery chain, ALDI, that specializes in low cost, no-name-brand, bulk stock groceries.  The store doesn't accept credit cards or personal checks.  ALDI stores don't even provide free grocery bags, plastic costs 10¢ and paper is 5¢.  The result is that most items in the store cost a fraction of our local "bulk" grocery's prices.  Even more dramatic, though, is the difference between the two store's management styles. 

Recently, I was standing in a long line of ALDI shoppers waiting for my chance to pay money and escape the store.  One of the folks in front of me "discovered" (regardless of dozens of signs all around the store) that his credit card and checkbook weren't going to be accepted at the checkout counter.  The line came to a halt while he meandered toward the ATM.  A light came on next to the register and I began to consider pushing my cart to the side and leaving.  I'm not a great fan of standing in line.  Apparently, the light was a request from the checker for backup.  In a few seconds a manager appeared and opened a second checkout line.  Big surprise, management doing work!

An even bigger surprise was yet to come.  Not only did the manager know how to work the register, he was a lightening fast checker and the folks who'd moved to his line (including me) practically ran through the line with their groceries.  Our local ALDI's checkers are famous for being efficient, but this guy was easily twice as fast as his employees. 

At the other end of the management equation is the Cub Foods management; the other bulk grocery in our neighborhood.  I have never seen Cub's managers run checkout and I'd be amazed if they are capable of doing anything that technical.  I have seen Cub's managers watch, disapprovingly, as their employees struggle with moronic customers and malfunctioning equipment.  They didn't lift a finger to improve the situation, but they do take every opportunity to work on their Scrooge facial expressions.  As a result, the Cub store is consistently filthy, disorganized, and the general attitude of its employees could be summed up with the word "disinterested." 

To take the inactive manager motif to the extreme, you could look to our current Commander in Thief.  G.W. Bush is the laziest, most uninvolved President the nation has seen since Reagan or Eisenhower.  In his first year of office, one of the most catastrophic in the nation's history, GeeWiz was on vacation more often than he was "working."  However, when he's working he's mostly on vacation.  The status of the current executive summaries is something slightly less sophisticated than a series of "where's Waldo" illustrations.  Whether Bush is intellectually incapacitated is unknown, because he's so lazy that his capabilities are completely untested.  Bush has tossed his responsibilities off on a variety of subordinates, none of whom are equipped (technically, ethically, intellectually, or psychologically) to handle the job.  As a result, the nation's national security experienced it's worst failure since WWII and the worst ever failure to protect civilians.  The economy has stumbled from a booming, energetic, and creative high to a malaise nearly equal to the mess that Reagan's corrupt mishandling created for the early Clinton years.  And, maybe worst of all, the nation is practically perfectly polarized; unequalled since the years leading to the Civil War.  We have two, nearly equally populated sides that absolutely, totally hate each other.  Bush and the Neocons have turned the country so completely against itself that we ought to rename ourselves the Disconnected States. 

Typical of what happens when a corporation is experiencing this kind of failure of leadership, many of the nation's best and brightest are contemplating jumping ship.  Fortunately for the world, this happened when Hitler's Germany was misled by a similarly lazy, incompetent, and uninvolved "leader."  Without an intelligent, moral, and aware top executive, the marching morons took charge and drove Germany in so many foolish directions that the nation's energy was misspent far more quickly than it would have been if there had been executive planning and guidance behind the mischief.  Lucky for us.  If Germany had retained its best and brightest, they would have had the atomic bomb years before us and their missile program would have been capable of delivering that bomb to our continent. 

Bush's amoral 30% majority is a similar crowd.  They are mostly out for themselves, taking on an occasional distraction like school vouchers, abortion, and pointless wars against third world nations.  They're uneducated, unscientific, uncreative, and selfish.  In the end, the Bushies will dissipate our national resources, international respect and power, and convince many of the most intelligent and talented citizens that America's time has come and that it's time to move to a more hospitable and dynamic country. 

Uninvolved leadership always self-destructs.  You'd think the free market advocates would be a little concerned about this fact.

#106 The Rat is Disgusted (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The more I know about what's likely to happen in this coming election, the more disgusted I become. 

Americans have the lowest science and math test scores in the industrialized world and we're demonstrating our incapacity in our political system. 

For example, the folks in charge of the current pitiful excuse for the US government failed to protect the American public in the most incompetent mismanagement of national security in the history of the nation.  Bush and CRAP were so busy packing their pockets and "reforming" the tax code to benefit the scumbags they represent that they were totally surprised by the fact that there are people out there who would love to do major damage to this country.  There were intelligence warnings flying in all directions and the Bushies ignored their job because they were all geared up to rape and pillage the economy, the public education system, and wipe out the middle class. 

The military was equally busy double-dipping, saluting itself, and wasting time and resources and, when it was finally called upon to protect American citizens.  Our military, especially the Air Farce, was so incredibly impotent that the task fell to the passengers of a hijacked airplane to commit suicide to protect Washington DC.  That same military drones failed to put an end to the Taliban in Afghanistan, to find Osama bin Laden, or to make a reasonable effort to secure the nation's boarders from terrorists.  If these folks had been in charge of a corporation's internal security, they would have been fired, blacklisted, and publicly humiliated in the national media.  Being government deadbeats in a nation of sheep, they have distracted the public eye by pretending an invasion of a tiny, starving third world dictatorship has something to do with national security.  That tactic would only work in a country where the public eye is connected to a very tiny public brain. 

After failing miserably at the job they were assigned, Bush and CRAP have dismantled the Constitution and Bill of Rights as quickly as possible.  The very freedoms they pledged to protect are the first freedoms they chose to eliminate.  In the interests of "national security," the folks who couldn't protect a goat from a poodle are turning the United States into a replica of the old Soviet Union.  

With this background, the average American Joe and Joan are telling pollsters that they are going to vote for Bush and CRAP because they think Bush will better protect the country from terrorists.  This is the same logic that says "fight fire with fire."  If you think setting your bedroom on fire to slow down a kitchen fire is a smart tactic, then you are the kind of voter the Republicans are hoping to see at the polls; really dumb voters. 

They are offering us a nancy-boy, cheerleading frat brat who hid behind his daddy's skirts to evade the draft, was overcome by fear at having to fly office flowers in the rich kids' branch of the National Guard.  A twerp so cowardly that he went AWOL to keep from having to flunk a physical because he couldn't disguise the layer of coke dust powdering his nose.  The little feller is totally incapable of providing a strong national security.  Impossibly unlikely.  But dumbass Americans who can't do basic math or comprehend simple logic are unlikely to figure this one out before the rest of the world is unable to tell us from the other bad guys. 

Yeah, I'm disgusted.  This is a pitiful time to be an American.  We're too dumb to breathe and there is no sign that we're likely to get smarter in the next few generations.  I suppose that means we're about to suffocate.